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I don't want to be a douche, but my feelings about this anime remain the same as those of two years ago: I loathed the cheap, bait-and-switch tactic used for contrived dramatic effect, and I still do today.

The dramatic device severely cheapened the impact of the tragedy for me because it was so jarringly unrealistic compared to the events portrayed in the earlier part of the series. If Yuuki had to die, there could have been so many other ways to do it realistically, other than the "I-see-dead-people" routine.

That aside, words fail to encompass the enormity of the crisis faced by Japan at the moment. I can only maintain respectful silence and hope, from the bottom of my heart, for things to return to normal as soon as possible.

I don't want to be a douche, but my feelings about this anime remain the same as those of two years ago: I loathed the cheap, bait-and-switch tactic used for contrived dramatic effect, and I still do today.

The dramatic device severely cheapened the impact of the tragedy for me because it was so jarringly unrealistic compared to the events portrayed in the earlier part of the series. If Yuuki had to die, there could have been so many other ways to do it realistically, other than the "I-see-dead-people" routine.

That aside, words fail to encompass the enormity of the crisis faced by Japan at the moment. I can only maintain respectful silence and hope, from the bottom of my heart, for things to return to normal as soon as possible.

The way i understood it was that she was imagining him rather, than seeing his ghost, she was so traumatized that she could not accept reality and created her own, but i could be wrong

The way i understood it was that she was imagining him rather, than seeing his ghost, she was so traumatized that she could not accept reality and created her own, but i could be wrong

That's the psychological/science explanation. They played it so people could draw either a supernatural or science explanation.

But I also tend to agree with TRL that it kind of derailed an otherwise compelling story, in my view because they stretched it for the rest of the series. Suddenly it stopped being about the experience of a disaster and tripped into a psych drama about denial.

I happened to be writing about the Kantou quake elsewhere this morning and went back to review my and drobertbaker's postings on the reality of the death toll in TM8.0. The anime posited 180,000 deaths, far above any estimates of the toll from this earthquake. It also appears that the tsunami was at least as responsible for fatalities as the quake itself.

Now one might usually ignore such discrepancies in an entertainment program, but the producers repeatedly told us how they had carefully modeled the show on research and simulations.

One other issue that came up concerned funerary customs and cremation. Some commentators here discussed whether

Spoiler for just in case:

Yuuki had been cremated at the hospital.

Just this morning NPR reported on the substantial backlog crematorium operators now face in dealing with the numbers of deceased. Shrines and temples face similar backlogs.

Seiji Sensei, I think if this quake had an epicenter of say, 40 miles from Tokyo instead of the 250 miles or so it was, 180,000 would have been a conservative number. And as I remember, the quake in the show supposedly was centered right in Tokyo Bay.

It seems disrespectful somehow to debate the merits of the plot twist in this show but since the topic was raised - in my view Vexx is correct, it derailed an otherwise promising story. His verbiage is a lot more charitable than I'd use, but I agree with the central point. If anyone wants to see how an anime tackles this kind of disaster the series is certainly worth watching - but for me, I'd probably bail after the first half.

Seiji Sensei, I think if this quake had an epicenter of say, 40 miles from Tokyo instead of the 250 miles or so it was, 180,000 would have been a conservative number. And as I remember, the quake in the show supposedly was centered right in Tokyo Bay.

I'm unconvinced. Japan has some of the strongest building codes in the world that enforce earthquake-resistant designs. Even in Sendai most buildings appear to have withstood the effects of the earthquake. I suspect we'll discover that the effects of the tsunami were much worse than those of the quake itself. Still it's all speculation at the moment. I doubt we'll know the true answers to these questions for at least a few months if not longer.

TM8.0 never mentioned the possibility of tsunamis.

A more difficult question concerns the requirements imposed on TEPCO. I've seen reports that the plants were designed to withstand quakes in the 7.5-8.0 range, considerably below the size of the 1923 Kantou quake. TEPCO had also considered the possibility of tsunami damage, but they underestimated the extent of possible damage and the sequence of events that actually took place. From the diagrams in that presentation, it looks like TEPCO was planning for tsunamis on the order of five meters high and thought doubling that was a sufficient safety margin (see p.15).

The way i understood it was that she was imagining him rather, than seeing his ghost, she was so traumatized that she could not accept reality and created her own, but i could be wrong

Quote:

Kesennuma, Miyagi prefecture (March 21, Mon)

Within minutes of the March 11 earthquake striking, Eriko Ohara, 33, attempted to flee by car to an evacuation centre in Kesennuma, Miyagi prefecture, with her two young daughters Rio, two, and Ria, five months. She received a call from her husband, Yoshinari, also 33, a delivery-company driver.

"Are you alright? The phone lines will go out soon," he said.

There was so much she wanted to say. But carrying two children crying with fear, Eriko was unable to express her feelings. The phone was soon disconnected. It was the couple's final conversation.

Sadly, Eriko received news of her husband's death last Thursday. Her husband's boss told her that Yoshinari had almost certainly succumbed to the tsunami while delivering goods around the Kesennuma area.

Last Friday, she went to a temporary morgue in the city to identify his body after her children were asleep. Seeing her husband's body, tears rolled down her cheeks. "I love you," she murmured.

Eriko returned to their house — miraculously still standing — to collect some clothes to dress her husband. She looked through belongings she had collected from his company. Among these items she found a ring.

Yoshinari had apparently bought it as a surprise White Day present for March 14 in return for chocolates she had given him on Valentine's Day. She remembered sometimes sniping at Yoshinari: "I wish you'd get me a ring or something but, sadly, you're not the present-giving type."

Her life at the evacuation centre continues and bringing up her children there has become increasingly difficult. She does not know how much longer the situation will continue, but every time she looks at the ring, Eriko promises her husband she will take full responsibility for bringing up their children.

I heard that the second wave of tsunami was coming, so we (he and his wife) tried to run away. The water started to come in. It looked bad, so we started to go to the second floor together. I have a bad leg, so my wife was behind me, cheering me on, saying, "One, two, one, two."

Yuta Saga, 21, was picking up broken cups after the earthquake when he heard sirens and screams of "Tsunami!" He grabbed his mother by the arm and ran to the junior-high school, the tallest building around.

When they reached the school, Yuta and his mother found the stairs to the roof clogged with older people who appeared unable to muster the strength to climb them. Some were just sitting or lying on the steps. As the bottom floor filled with fleeing residents, the wave hit.

At first, the doors held. Then water began to pour through the seams and flow into the room. In a panic to reach the roof, younger residents began pushing and yelling, "Hurry!" and "Out of the way!" They climbed over those who were not moving, or elbowed them aside.

"I couldn't believe it," Yuta said. "They were even shoving old people out of the way. The old people couldn't save themselves. People didn't care about others."

Then the doors burst open, and the water rushed in. It was quickly waist level. Yuta saw one older woman, without the strength or will to stand, sitting in water that rose to her nose. He rushed behind her, grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up the stairs. Another person on the stairs grabbed her and lifted her up to another person. The men formed a human chain, lifting the older residents and some children to the top.

"I saw the ugly side of people, and then I saw the good side," he said. "Some people only thought of themselves. Others stopped to help."

Just three examples of courage, grief and tragedy amid thousands more of such stories lingering in the wake of the disaster that struck Japan on March 11. Reality bites hard enough, without need for far-fetched contrivances to add further spice.

This anime's ending is melodramatic, certainly. As a drama, it works. As a purported "simulation" of disaster, however, it failed miserably — and that was where the series lost me as an emotionally engaged viewer.

For people calling this series "predictable" I can't really agree. I honestly thought they might have written it as "the family members of both Mari AND the children died so after coming to realize this, the three form their own little family".
But I was way wrong! And I like it when anime goes "Guess what, your prediction didn't come true!" Though I think I might've preferred my idea over the true "Yuuki eventually died" ending. You can chalk me up with the ignorant masses who didn't understand he died in episode 8 until after a second watch. It was good that Mari's mother and Hina made it though. I really thought they were dead! I didn't find that scene so bait-and-switch. The area was large, there were TONS of people who died, so is it really so unbelievable victims of the same age and sex could be mistaken for the ones you're looking for? No way, I bet that happens A LOT. Likewise with the aftershocks and the kids getting separated. It was repetitive but real life is repetitive too. It just adds to the realism.

I just finished watching this anime straight-through and it was very sad. Felt a little like (no a lot like) Grave of the Fireflies....but this was much more heartfelt and warming where GotF felt like nitty-gritty reality that said "This is life. It sucks and children DO die." Tokyo Magnitude says "This is life. It sucks and children DO die...but you need to be strong for the sake of your own future. Keep hanging in there."

One other issue that came up concerned funerary customs and cremation.

Just this morning NPR reported on the substantial backlog crematorium operators now face in dealing with the numbers of deceased. Shrines and temples face similar backlogs.

Thought I'd post this follow-up to that NPR story, to give people here a sense of the scale of damage in tsunami-hit Miyagi prefecture. It's been two weeks since the quake and tsunami, and it's only just last weekend that families in Northeast Japan are beginning to cremate their dead.

Natori, Miyagi prefecture (March 28, Mon): The furnaces are burning again at the tsunami-battered crematorium in Natori, where workers face a grisly backlog of bodies from Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly a century.

Since the March 11 tsunami that slammed into Japan's northeast coast, priority has been given to repairing facilities, like this one, that are needed to help deal with the disaster's human cost.

Despite severe damage to the buildings at the coastal crematorium, the roar of kerosene burners filled its cold hall last Saturday for the first time since the disaster.

A bereaved family carefully placed charred bone fragments of two brothers onto silver trays using ceremonial chopsticks, while marks on the walls showed where seawater rose to the ceiling two weeks earlier.

The sensitivities of the family members attending Saturday's cremation had to contend with further repair work, as workmen drilled holes and hammered broken plaster off the walls.

The bodies of Ren Kashiwagi, 19, and his little brother, Itaru, 16, were found in a swamped field close to their home, nearly a week after the tsunami surged into Natori city.

Their parents, two remaining brothers, and an elderly grandmother silently passed the scorched bones to a master of ceremonies who placed them in funeral urns wrapped in orange cloth.

"After we have finished the cremation, we will be able to take the ashes with us. This gives us some peace," the boys' father, Mr Yoshinori Kashiwagi, told AFP.

Four more cremations were scheduled on the same day, and engineers were hoping that the other two furnaces in the plant would be working in about a week.

Like dozens of other towns on Japan's Pacific coast, Natori has struggled to cope with a mounting backlog of decomposing corpses, recovered from mangled cars, drowned paddyfields and flattened houses.

Japanese usually cremate their dead, and the Kashigawi family were among those fortunate enough to observe the normal rituals for the two brothers.

Others have had no choice but to watch their lost relatives buried in mass graves, with an official promise that they will be exhumed and cremated properly at a later date.

I had this anime on my backlog long before the events that happen in Japan but decide bump it on my priority to-watch list afterward. I was pretty uneasy going in because I didn't know what to expect out of the series, especially considering the pre-episode warnings on how supposedly accurate this would be due to all the "research" done on earthquakes.

Spoiler:

However it basically played out like a longer version of Grave of Fireflies in the end.

I was a little slow to pick up that Yuuki had actually died even though I shouldn't have let my "guard" down during the various dream hospital scenes. It really became obvious to me though when I saw Yuuki running with his backpack on even though he left it at the hospital earlier when Mari reunited with her family.

Between that and the post-ED credits news reporter mentioning the Crush syndrome I had that "wait a minute.." moment. Then it all came together and made the later episodes pretty sad to watch knowing that Mirai was simply having delusions the whole time.

I also should have picked up on Mari's facial expressions shortly after when Mirai, Mari, and "Yuuki" left the hospital. It obvious the series was trying to throw a small hint out there but I was so absorbed and distracted by seeing them just simply get home I forgot about it.

Mirai was really bratty and selfish at the beginning, it was nice to see her change into a decent in the end but pretty sad it took an event such Yuuki's death for her to experience such development (but that's sometimes how it goes for some people...). I felt much better about her than that brother from Grave of Fireflies who I wanted to punch in the throat what that movie was all said and done, heh.